african history

Although Africans and people of African descent are seldom given credit in standard textbooks, African wisdom contributed greatly toward the development of modern medicine. For example, in Western Africa during the Songhay Empire, about 1457 AD, (when Europe was still in its "Dark Ages") the city of Jeanne had a medical school which employed 100's of teachers and was world famous for training surgeons in difficult operations such as cataract surgery. They also taught the pharmacological use of over 1,000 animal and plant products for the treatment of medical illnesses. Many of these same medicines in pill or liquid form are used today. For example, castor seeds, the source of castor oil, was used for constipation and castor oil is still used today. Kaolin was used for diarrhea and is still used today in kaopectate. Night blindness caused by Vitamin "A" deficiency was treated with Ox liver, which is rich in vitamin "A". Vitamin "C" deficiency was treated with onions, which have a high vitamin "C" content.

The antibiotic penicillin (produced by penicillium mold) and its therapeutic properties were well known by the ancient Egyptians who far exceeded the rest of the ancient world in medical knowledge. However, the presence of the antibiotic tetracycline appears only in the bones of farmers from northern Sudan about 1500 years ago. The ancient Sudanese farmers discovered that streptomyces molds can easily produce tetracycline on stored grain and purposefully used tetracycline to treat infection. There is no evidence that tetracycline antibiotic has been used anywhere else in the world. Tetracycline was not rediscovered until the twentieth century.

More than 40% of modern pharmacological medicines are derived from traditional African medicinal herbs. For example, the Yoruba of Nigeria used the plant Rauwolfia vomitoria as a sedative or tranquilizer to calm agitated or psychotic patients. Modern medicine was able to isolate a substance called reserpine from this plant that was marketed for the same purpose. Reserpine was also discovered to profoundly lower blood pressure and consequently, became one of the antihypertensive medications.

In America, in 1721 an African slave named Onesimus taught his master an age old African technique for smallpox inoculation in which a pustule from an infected person was ruptured with a thorn and then used to puncture the skin of a normal person. Subsequently, during a smallpox epidemic in the Boston, MA area, Dr. Boylston inoculated 241 healthy people by this African technique and only six caught smallpox. During the American Revolutionary War, General George Washington ordered his entire army inoculated against smallpox by this African method. In the 1790's, the British Dr. Edward Jenner only changed the African smallpox inoculation technique by using a less dangerous kind of smallpox germ.

Finally, as recently as 1880 AD in Europe, the mortality rate was almost 100% for mothers delivering their babies by caesarian section (that is, delivering babies through the abdomen). Consequently, the operation was only performed to save the life of the infant. Dr. R. W. Felkin, a missionary, shocked the European medical community when he published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884 that the Banyoro surgeons in Uganda performed caesarian sections routinely, without harmful effects to the mother or the infant. A group of European surgeons went to study in Uganda for six months before they could successfully learn the advanced surgical techniques demonstrated by the Africans. The Europeans were also taught sophisticated concepts of anesthesia and antisepsis. For example, they were taught to routinely wash the surgeon's hands and the mother's abdomen with alcohol prior to surgery to prevent infection. This antisepsis technique had not been practiced in Europe prior to this African visit.

In summary, Africans have contributed greatly toward the development of modern medicine and deserve to be better acknowledged in our medical textbooks.

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[genx1973]

More Afrocentric crap. Africa wisdom is one hell of an oxymoron if I ever did see one.

[auhuruhesi]

just because our people did not isolate and make a dichotomy between nature and the body , does not mena that they did not know what they were doing. When you use the whole prescription , knowing how to make the different medicinal yourself whether it be from molded food or herbs then you have the total know how with no need to market it for fame or push it to the people because healers are found throughout the communities. thanks

[JOANNE3870]

Also, Lister had already developed antiseptic technique before 1880 and Lady Wortley Montague had already introduced a similar technique for smallpox which had long been used in the Far East. In short, most of the 'milestones' you mention actually weren't unique eg use of herbs or were not indeed African discoveries eg antibiotics. This is why the credit is missing in textbooks

[JOANNE3870]

They never discovered reserpine, they just used the herb rauwolfia - all cultures used herbs medicinally, many of which are now used for drug production eg digitalis. They didn't discover any antibiotic either, they used mouldy foods to treat infections as did many civilisations - they did not isolate penicillin and the presence of tetracycline in bones was due to drinking from urns made of soil contaminated by Streptomyces - they didn't know it was present let alone use it medically.

[XxWoWlegacyxX]

... 1* since nobody gives a shit